Personal Development Portfolio - Essay Example

Running Head: Personal Development Portfolio Personal Development Portfolio [Institute’s Personal Development Portfolio INTRODUCTION Through the research and analysis presented in this paper, I have tried to understand my personality and behavior at a much higher degree, which would help me, formulate precise goals and aims for my future matching perfectly to my personality. The paper has three basic sections; where in the first part, I present various different personality tests, by whose help I analyze the basic traits of my personality based on different theories and theoretical frameworks. The next section I relate my career opportunities to my personality by which I comprehend the basic knowledge, abilities, skills, and other characteristics that are required for that job. While the third section concludes the paper and initiates a thorough analysis between the fact that to what degree there is a match between myself, my personality, my career, my job and its requirements. Moreover, this section would also act my mentor as well as my self-created challenge for coming three to five years of my life to which I could always relate to and formulate a strategy for a successful life, helping me to overcome my shortcomings and further polish my positive traits and unique abilities. UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF Big Five-Model Personality Test Human behavior as many psychiatrists and theorists (Paris, pp. 20-29, 2001) believe is a machine ongoing development and thus going through different and unique phases in its journey of life; while understanding ones personality makes this journey fruitful as it helps unlock elusive human qualities, such as leadership, motivation, and empathy. Self-development theories (Beck, pp. 10-12, 1976) and widely available tests/quizzes are easy to understand and help in the development of self-awareness. Similarly, more than five decades ago, when psychologists and experts (Capuzzi & Gross, pp. 39-47, 2003) were curious to know and understand personalities of people, and how they made each individual different from the other given the basic circumstances of growth, they found out possible to break down a personality into five distinct elements or dimensions (Cormier & Hackney, pp. 70-77, 1993). Five factors they believed were “Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability or Neuroticism and openness to experience” (Bryon, pp. 5-9, 2006); which helped coin the word “OCEAN”. The first factor extroversion, aims at finding whether a person is an introvert or an extrovert. Extroverts are carefree, hyperactive active, outgoing, social, and energetic people, who take a great amount of peer pressure (Bryon, pp. 5-9, 2006). On the other hand, introverts are the latter terms opposite by being calm, reserved in nature, less amiable, less outgoing, and those who care little of what the world thinks about them. However, it is vital to notify here that introverts (Burger, pp. 25-30, 2007) by no means are depressed, shy or less confident personalities; but they build up a secure world of their own, which has few important people inside it (Bryon, pp. 5-9, 2006). My score in this regard was 33, which indicates that I am an extrovert. Moreover, the highest attainable score was forty and the median being twenty-five, thus, it is important to note my degree of extroversion here. The next element is agreeableness (Burnes, pp. 50-54, 2009), which considers people who are warm, polite, friendly, concerned, helpful, and considerate agreeable. They have an optimistic view about life and believe that the interests of the group should be placed above one’s personal interests. People who score low in this regard generally are skeptic, suspicious, uncooperative, self-interest driven, unconcerned and non-friendly people (Mullins, pp. 66-77). My score in this regard was thirty-six, which is quite an “agreeable” score. The third dimension is conscientiousness, which caters to an individual who prefers planning, discipline, and goal setting, keen after achievement of goals, understands, and values his responsibilities towards the world more than his own self-values. (Burger, 52-58). My score in this dimension was twenty-two, which is even low than the median score of 24 indicating that I am a disorganized and an unplanned person and thus, I need to work on this perspective. The fourth element is emotional instability, known as Neuroticism (Dar-El, pp. 68-70, 2000). Those with high scores in this area of the test are usually depressed, scared, and fearful of life, stressed, frustrated and full of negative anxiety (Llewellyn & Holt, pp. 85-89, 2007). This does not leave a negative impact on such people alone, but in work environments, as well they tend to demotivate those around themselves as they have uneasiness and empathy within themselves (Mullins, pp. 66-77, 2008). My score is this regard was 24 showing that I score a median value. While openness to a given experience refers to the degree to which an individual respects, admires, likes, and appreciates, creativity, and new ideas. How easily he is able to work out things through his imagination, diversity, and variety in thoughts. My score of thirty-three in this dimension shows that I am pretty much a person who is open to experience. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) MBTI (Harvard Business School Press, pp. 1-11, 2005) one of the most widely used personality tests in the world today was created for people to more easily understand themselves, and employ its positive findings in improving their lives. Its basic goal is to assess perceptions and the ways that influence an individual while making decisions (Bayne, pp. 52-85, 1997). This test actually attempts to classify people as either “Extraverts or Introverts (E versus I), either Sensing or Intuitive (S versus N), either thinkers or feelings (T versus F), and either Judgers or Perceivers” (J versus P)” (Ormrod, pp. 23-25, 2004). For example, an introvert, thinker, and judging person would be ‘ISTJ personality type’ (Paul, pp. 2-8, 2005). This test showed that I am an ENFP personality type individual. Research shows that ENFP are usually energetic and friendly people, who are not narrow-minded, but would struggle to look for positive possibilities (Mullins, pp. 66-77, 2008). On the other hand, this employs that such individuals do not have a set goal and would change their perspective towards others and life randomly, and move towards a completely different ideology; but they still remain enthusiastic and discovering new possibilities and act as positive energies for others around them, as being warm and friendly individuals (Kalat, pp.33-37, 2007). These people would not respond well to inflexible schedules, detail oriented work, or under the strict command of a leader, but would like to be their own boss, with minimum supervision and complete liberty of decisions and approach to the task (Bayne, 52-85, 1997). ENFPs (Quinn, pp. 19-24, 1996) have an entrepreneur hidden within themselves to their risk taking ability; thus, expert’s belief is that the most suited professions for these individuals are teaching, acting, entrepreneurship, counseling, politician, diplomat, writer, television reporter, and others (Carter, pp. 5, 2007). Until this point in time, there is pretty much consistency between my results and scores of MBTI and big five model test where both of them suggest that I am an extrovert, friendly, cooperative, sensitive to other’s needs, spontaneous, unplanned, unorganized, and creative. Self-Monitoring test The test classifies people in either class of high or low self-monitoring people; the former including those who are adaptable to different scenarios, are acceptable and dynamic with their work, while the later categorizes individuals who are more introvert (Holbeche, pp. 9-14, 2006). This test contains around eighteen situations and respondent identifies that how would he or she act in a particular situation (Johns & Saks, pp. 12-18, 2007). With a specific formula of assigning points, a score comes up on the scene. If that score is above 12, then the individual has a high self-monitoring ability (Tosi & Mero, 74-79, 2003). I had a score of 16, which indicates that I do not have adaptability problems. People with higher test results are more likely to receive higher increments, social acceptability, and have higher central leadership positions (Knights & Willmott, pp. 49-52, 2007). Thus, my results from this test correspond respectively with those from the previous conducted. RIASEC test RAISEC test developed by Holland (Rogers, pp. 1-11, 1980) was an important revolution in the field of personality. The RIASEC test Holland believes in matching an individual to his job according to his personality specifications. Holland developed the Vocational Preference Inventory Questionnaire containing around 160 occupations and which set of individual traits would best suit them (Mullins, 52-57, 2008). An individual answers the test through liking or disliking a statement, which in turn forms a hexagonal shape containing six types of personalities on its six sides namely, realistic, investigative, social, conventional, enterprising and artistic; whereby each personality trait fits a specific job alone (Bayne, pp. 13-18, 1997). My score is making a shape of SERIAC (Wilson, pp. 33-37, 1999), which shows that I am a best suited for social occupations like a nurse, teacher, counselor, business trainer, psychologist, and caretaker. I could also do well in jobs of enterprising such as lawyers, real estate agents, business managers, public relations specialist, and others (Tosi & Mero, 74-79, 2003). The results of RAISEC test also match to those of the previous tests, suggesting me take up a more social occupation in response to my agreeable and extrovert nature (Mobley, pp. 59-64, 2005). Therefore, the similar result of all the tests has helped to identify my personality as well as the job where I could show maximum efficiency and comfort. In brief, all these tests have facilitated in understanding me in a critical manner and from a different perspective. While relating the results with different theories, it has been an observation that my culture has played a crucial role in making me how I exist as today. From the lens of McGregor’s theory, I stand in between the X and Y categories, as creative but at the same time, needs to be controlled. While relating my culture and personality with more theories, I came across different theories (Gestalt theory, theory of individual psychology) of counseling. They have been a significant constituent of analysis since many years. Such theories facilitated me in acquiring a positive perspective of my mind, as they indicated the intention that every individual aspires to improve his/her behavior. The struggle for behavioral perfection allows one to bring about an optimistic alteration in his personality through guidance (controlling) that was observable in my test results. UNDERSTANDING WORK I want to have a career in human resource management, whose basic function include staffing, recruiting, training and development and reward and compensation (Johns & Saks, pp. 14, 2007), while all of these tasks are completely controlled by the HR manager. “Recruiting, selection, human resource planning, labor laws, handling grievances, training and development, rewards and compensation, etc” (Martin, pp. 36-37, 2001). As HR is a field, which directly deals with hiring individuals according to the job requirements, thus it is very important that the manager himself possesses a thorough knowledge of human psychology and behavior, work environment, and proper technological skills. He should also be highly knowledgeable, charismatic, eloquent in English and other important foreign language, and should also be well aware of market requirements, labor laws, training methods, coaching and counseling methods, sociology and others (Martin, pp. 36-37, 2001). The manager should have inspirational communication skills, good listening ability and writing skills; they need to have good observing qualities, high strategic planning and exceptional creative abilities, which are the requirements of their job (Hoffman, pp. 74-79, 2000). Also good leadership, stress handling abilities, flexibilities, cooperative attitude, and high integrity, makes an HR manager exceptional at his work (Mullins, pp. 47-49, 2008). INTEGRATION AND INSIGHTS (ACTION PLAN) The results of all the tests (Goldfried, pp. 1-5, 1982) carried out are very integrative, while combined with my perspective of a perfect job for me the results are very vague, and thus it is relatively difficult to formulate a perfect solution for my position. First looking at the brighter side of the picture, I can see that the HR manager is required to be very understanding, cooperative, warm natured, sympathetic, and should possess leadership qualities, and according to me as well as the proof from the tests, the traits meet the job requirements completely. On the other side, one of the most important tasks of the HR manager is ‘strategic planning’ (Gazda & Horne, pp. 11-16, 2001), which puts me in a doubt towards the job as I know and have seen through the personality tests repeatedly that I am neither strategic nor am I goo at planning. I scored less on conscientiousness, was catered at being impulsive, less disciplined, and disorganized, which all indicate that I am a clear mismatch for this job. As a result of this analysis, I am at least left with two options to ponder over, that is to either leave the notion of dwindling myself into HR and move into more of a realistic job such as marketing or stay in HR and work up on my ‘strategic planning’ abilities. However, this has helped identify my shortcomings and what changes I should make in myself so that I could rectify myself. Thus, my plan for the next 3 to 5 years is to start setting small goals for myself in my routine work every day, and later coming back to them, evaluating this task, and thinking on how I could improve on it even more. I believe that constantly working into this I would be able to suit myself up for the job with greater convenience. No matter accomplishing, this task would be tough, but it is something I believe I can attain through hard work. During this time, I would also try to learn more about human psychology so that I can better understand human behaviors. I also plan in trying to be more amiable and sociable so that I get the chance to meet different people with even random personality traits. Lastly, I would also try to be more positive and open to feedback and critical thought of others, so that I can become more adaptable to the society. Appendices Appendix I - Myers Briggs Type Indicator Personality ____E____ ____N____ ____F____ __P______ Appendix II – Self-Monitoring Test The statements below concern your personal reactions to a number of different situations. No two statements are exactly alike, so consider each statement carefully before answering. If a statement is TRUE or MOSTLY TRUE as applied to you, circle the “T”. If a statement is FALSE or NOT USUALLY TRUE as applied to you, circle the “F”. T F 1. I find it hard to imitate the behavior of other people. T F 2. At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things that others will like. T F 3. I can only argue for ideas when I already believe. T F 4. I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information. T F 5. I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people. T F 6. I would probably make a good actor. T F 7. In a group of people, I am rarely the center of attention. T F 8. In different situations and with different people I often act like very different persons. T F 9. I am not particularly good at making other people like me. T F 10. I am not always the person I appear to be. T F 11. I would not change my options (or the way I do things) in order to please someone else or win their favor. T F 12. I have considered being an entertainer. T F 13. I have never been good at games like charades or improvisational acting. T F 14. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations. T F 15. At a party, I let others keep the jokes and stories going. T F 16. I feel a bit awkward in company and do not show up quite as well as I should. T F 17. I can look anyone in the eye and lie with a straight face (if for a right end). T F 18. I may deceive people by being friendly when I really dislike them. To score the scale, give one point for each of the following questions answered True: 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 17, 18. Give one point for each of the following questions answered False: 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16. Total the score. High scores indicate higher self-monitoring. TOTAL SELF-MONITORING SCORE: _16________ References Bayne, Rowan. 1997. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Nelson Thornes. Beck, A. T. 1976. Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. International Universities Press. Bryon, Mike. 2006. The Ultimate Psychometric Test Book. Kogan Page. Burger, Jerry M. 2007. Personality. Cengage Learning. Burnes, Bernard. 2009. Managing Change. Prentice Hall. 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Houghton Mifflin Publishers. Tosi, Henry L., & Mero, Neal P. 2003. The fundamentals of organizational behavior. Wiley-Blackwell. Wilson, Fiona Margaret. 1999. Organizational behaviour. Oxford University Press. Read More